NYC Film Critic

Disco and Atomic War
Directed by Jaak Kilmi
***1/2

Jaak Kilmi’s engaging memoir is a nice companion piece to one of my favorite documentaries of the year, Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika, which re-told the story of the fall of the Soviet Union through the eyes of five individuals that lived through it.  (Non-festival audiences will finally have the chance to catch Hessman’s film in early 2011 when it arrives in select theaters and on PBS.)  Like the men and women in Perestroika, Kilmi came of age in the final years of the U.S.S.R. and has vivid memories of the tumultuous changes happening all around him.

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Helena From the Wedding
Written and Directed by Joseph Infantolino
Starring Lee Tergesen, Melanie Lynskey, Jessica Hecht, Gillian Jacobs
**

In 1979, John Sayles made his feature filmmaking debut with Return of the Secaucus 7, an independently financed talk-a-thon about a group of college friends that throws a reunion party at a lakeside summer house, where they indulge in long conversations about life and love.

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The Harry Potter franchise enters the home stretch with the first installment of its two-part finale.  Read my review over at Film Journal.